Total pages in book: 50
Estimated words: 48601 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 243(@200wpm)___ 194(@250wpm)___ 162(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 48601 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 243(@200wpm)___ 194(@250wpm)___ 162(@300wpm)
Or, maybe not.
Because maybe—just maybe—the jokes are getting stale.
Teasing Ramona Weiss was my all time, top favorite thing to do before we moved away those years ago. Back then, I wasn’t living in Weiss Manor, of course. And dad was still married to Ethan and I’s mom, Patricia, at the height of her bullshit of running around and drinking. We lived across town, my dad working his ass off trying to build the construction business he’d leveraged everything for into something huge.
Southworth is primarily known for its ludicrously expensive, highly connected, and college resume-gilding boarding school, Winchester Academy, which serves grades nine through twelve. But aside from that, Southworth is also a crazy rich own on its own and crazy rich towns have fantastic schools. That’s why our dad scraped together everything he had to move us here, so Ethan an I could go to the best elementary school possible. Ethan’s my twin, by the way, though we’re not identical. And technically, I’m a minute older. A technicality I never let him forget.
Ethan and I were both always the black sheep of Southworth Elementary, of course. We lived here, but back then, before dad’s business skyrocketed, we didn’t “deserve” to be here like some of the ultra-rich kids whose families could trace their money back to pilgrims and tobacco plantations and shit like that. We were posers—not rich, we just happened to live in the same geographic boundary, and they rarely, rarely let us forget that.
I guess I adjusted better than Ethan, because while we both got in plenty of trouble, my hijinks were fun pranks. Ethan’s were more breaking and entering and stealing shit. That crap landed him at Lenox Hill for a few years—this hardcore military school style place for guys like Ethan who just needed some shaping up. The threat was there for me, but I stayed under the radar. Or maybe it was that Ethan’s shit was so much more outlandish than mine that he stole the spotlight.
But in any case, my pranks were all about Ramona, because it was too damn fun. “Kick me” signs taped to her back. A frog in her class cubby. Cat poop in her show and tell diorama. My ability to tease, bully, torment and torture Ramona knew no bounds. Why’d I do it? Back then, I told myself it was because her reactions were just too good. She never cried, she’d just get this sour little look on her face, which was actually pretty adorable. It looked like in the cartoons when steam comes out of the coyote’s ears or something. But, as we got older, and I just kept teasing her, I knew deep down, there was another reason.
Now, after three years away when dad and I moved down to South Caroline after mom’s drunk ass finally disappeared on us, and while Ethan was at Lenox Hill, we’re back. Dad’s construction business, Scott Contracting, kept jobs going up here, and through that he met Celia. As in Celia Weiss.
As in, Ramona’s mom.
Sparks flew, and suddenly, weeks before my senior year of high school, we picked up roots and moved back up here to Southworth and right into Weiss Manor. Because dad and Celia are getting married, and soon. And that makes my favorite teasing target something more.
That makes Ramona Weiss my new stepsister.
…This is a problem.
Not because I used to bully her, and to a certain degree, still do. Not because the Weiss’s are crazy rich and cultured, and here I am living here with my sleeves of tattoos, and my decidedly un-cultured appearance. No, it’s problem, because deep down, I know exactly why I tormented Ramona. It’s why I still do, and it’s taken me years to admit it to myself.
I bully and tease Ramona because I want her.
Realizing that before would have been problematic. Realizing it now is goddamn cataclysmic.
Because the pursed-mouth, pouty lipped, dark haired, blue-eyed, over-achieving, class valedictorian, first chair clarinet, debate team captain, varsity cheerleading, seething little one-hundred-and-ten-pound package storming away from me up to her room full of full-color printouts of cocks is my undoing.
My very confusing, head-twisting, jaw-clenching, pulse thundering little problem. And I have no idea what to do about it.
3
Ramona
Finally, all the damn pictures are down, thank God. I look down at the huge pile of them—the huge pile of dicks—on my bed, and I blush as I roll my eyes.
This is so fucking typical of him. It’s so infuriatingly juvenile, and I hate that I know him this well. I hate that I know that he probably watched YouTube videos on how to break into my room. I hate that I know that he snickered while he did it all, taping all of these pictures of genitals up all over my room with a shit-eating grin on his perfect, chiseled jaw.